Frozen Mid-Cut: Log Sculpture Shows How Trees Get Sliced

Ever wonder how boards turn from trees into building materials? While not a secret, the process is also not entirely obvious – and rarely this clear or quite so visceral.

Vincent Kohler (photos by Geoffrey Cottenceau) shows the art and geometry of the dissection process in much the same way an insect specialist might cut and splice a living specimen (or a butcher’s chart shows where slabs of meat can be found).

The result is a kind of three-dimensional version of a logging diagram drawing, showing in frozen time and physical reality how each cut is made and what the resulting sizes are, from which our minds can also reverse-engineer the order of cuts.